Investigation school attendance in Leeds with particular reference to court adjournments

Abstract

Children in Leeds who failed to attend school regularly
were often taken to the Juvenile Court by the the local
Education Authority under care procedings provided for by
the Children and Young Person's Act, 1969, and dealt with
by repeated adjournments of the case until and improvement
in school attendance was sustained.
Previous research had suggested that repeated adjournments
were an effective means of returning most children to
regular school attendance but children who failed to do so
often found themselves in care for varying periods.
The aims of the research reported in this thesis were,
firstly, to evaluate the effectiveness of two types of
adjournment, flexible and inflexible, and a "letters"
procedure, using a randomly controlled trial; and secondly,
to study some other factors associated with poor school
attendance in Leeds by considering the children themselves
and the effects of the court procedures on them and their
families using a series of questionnaire-based interviews.
Overall, adjournments acheived their purpose in returning
many children to regular school attendance, and there were
no significant differences between the procedures tested.
Improvement in school attendance after the first court
hearing was found to be related to whether chilrren had
improved attendance beforehand once they knew they were to
go to court. The less this anticipatory improvement, the
more likely was the child to go into care. The threat of
going to court seemed to produce as much response from
children who did well on adjournments as the adjournments
themselves.
Features of "truancy" and "refusal" emerged from a
questionnaire and they were examined in relation to
outcome. Children who showed neither characteristic did
best on adjournments. The interviews suggested that
parents of court children provided less supervision for
their children than parents of a control group, and the
court children had poorer material conditions.
Reactions to the adjournments were mixed, but many parents
and children expressed a great fear of the child going into
care. Many heavily criticised schools.
The adjournment method is controversial and has been
publicly criticised by many people. Some attempt at
evaluating this by considering the ethical implications and
social consequences of the research has been made, in the
hope that this will influence future developments in the
field.